The Pleasure Lists Q&A: Durga Chew-Bose

Pleasures, Curated by author Durga Chew-Bose

We’re back with another installment of

The Pleasure Lists

: Pleasures, Curated.

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy getting to know members of the Pleasure Lists community and what makes their Pleasures tick.

Pleasures, Curated by Durga Chew-Bose

Durga Chew-Bose is a Montreal-based writer and filmmaker. Her collection of essays Too Much and Not the Mood (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) was published in 2017. In 2024, she made her directorial debut at the Toronto International Film Festival with Bonjour Tristesse, a film adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s classic novel. The film will be released in 2025. She has written catalogue essays on a variety of artists including Agnes Martin, Nicole Eisenman, and Wolfgang Tillmans.

Location: Montreal

Social: @durgapolashi

Pleasures

• When we are watching a movie with my son, he gets scared, and instead of saying, “fast forward,” he says “turn the page!”

• Vintage Black Cotton T-shirts:

  I collect them. Faded black cotton is a prize color. An unrivalled neutral. The first thing I pack.

• Morning coffee while I zone out to the collage of chaos on our fridge. I’m really not staring at anything but I’m also staring at postcards from friends, Pinocchio, Ornette Coleman, Chantal Akerman, love notes, a recipe for potato salad, vacation kitsch, the words “Any Closer to Joy” scribbled on a post-it.

  

• The backyard birthday party finale in Minnie and Moskowitz

  

• Hot chocolate from Sprüngli in Zurich. It’s hardly sweet. It’s almost tart. It tastes of cocoa and not much else. It serves its purpose. My father loved Sprüngli chocolate.